Of that Byzantine Empire, the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed… There has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely destitute of all the forms and elements of greatness… Its vices were the vices of men who have had ceased to be brave without learning to be virtuous… Slaves, and willing slaves, in both their actions and their thoughts, immersed in sensuality and in the most frivolous pleasures, the people only emerged from their listlessness when some theological subtlety, or some chivalry in the chariot race, stimulated them to frantic riots… The history of the Empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude, of perpetual fratricides.This somewhat startling diatribe is taken from W.E.H. Leckyh’s History of Euorpean Morals, published in 1869…